Mobile Learning and Students’ Academic Achievement: A Second-order Meta-analysis Study

Abstract

Though the relationship between mobile learning and academic achievement has increasingly gained attention by some researchers, the meta-analysis studies have yet to definitively conclude the overall impact of mobile learning on academic achievement. In order to synthesize the findings of 22 meta-analyses that are directly pertinent to the research question, encompassing papers that have been published, we examine to what extent publication year, subject category, and grade level moderate the influences of mobile learning on academic achievement as well as the moderating effect of methodological quality of first-order meta-analyses. There is the positive overall effect with significance (g = .665 p < .001, 95% CI = .443–.887) of mobile learning on students’ academic achievement compared to traditional learning. Moreover, the results confirmed that meta-analyses published in 2019–2020 had a significantly larger effect size than the ones published in 2014–2018, and the results were stable regardless of subject category, grade level, and methodological quality of first-order meta-analyses. Finally, insight and limitations were discussed.